“to further compatibility, common practices and standards in networking and in computer supported collaboration”

A few years later Gopher (which didn’t only suffer from the license-issue, but was less flexible as well) had disappeared completely, and the open WWW boomed and revolutionized the way information was published and consumed.

So the next time anyone asks you why “the open web” is that big a deal, you might want to ask them if they would rather Gopher instead.